The back leaves of the Register had never been opened in Tallow’s lifetime, and he had been alive, in the sense that mattered to a clerk, for two hundred years. He opened them now with a knife, because the glue had gone brittle in the damp of the Gatehouse, and the leaves came away with a small dry sound like a cough in a sickroom.
“Mind the edge,” he said. “The Ink does not forgive a torn page.”
“I am minding it,” said Idrin, who was holding the lamp.
The lamp was not steady. Tallow noted this, and then noted that he was noting it, and then made himself put the thought away, because a clerk who kept a running count of the Regent’s shaking hand would end up writing the Regent’s sentences as well. Idrin’s left hand was on the table, lying flat by the book with its fingers curled. His right hand held the lamp. It did not waver by more than a finger’s width. That was something.
“Here,” said Tallow. “The old Register, in the back. Between the leaves numbered one hundred and forty-four and two hundred and one.”
The clauses were in a narrow Lessaran hand, very neat, the kind of script that the Chancery taught to young clerks who would one day be asked to write a sentence that would never be read aloud. There were thirty-one of them. They lay scattered among the entries like seeds in a furrow, each one a short block…
